Hi all,
Part 3 of what will now be a 4 part tutorial is published.
You can find it via the link on my webpage:-
Pseudo-G
Is it possible that you could post your blendfile. can’t see directly what’s happening but you seem to have both different camera and lighting positions from my tutorial. Anyway post your blendfile and I will check whats wrong.
Cog
PS The last part 4 will hopefully be available sometime tomorrow.
Well, here’s the .blend:
http://noct.no-ip.org/files/ocean.blend
Although my camera position and lighting is different, I have the exact same texture settings, so I didn’t think it would be that far off from what you had (in terms of the appearance of the water’s surface). Mine looks very artificial with no small waves, and I can’t figure out what’s causing it. Thanks, Cog.
btw, your tutorials are GREAT!!! Thanks again
Ok Pseudo-G,
I’ve checked your blendfile. . The small & tiny waves are there but so big on your ocean mesh you can’t see them.
There are 2 things that are causing them to be very large and as such not be visible.
The mesh you have created is at least 10 times larger than that in the tutorial. You can tell that because in the camera view the mesh edges actually fall outside of the camera distance. As the small & tiny waves are mapped as ORCO the texture space is now very large and likewise the texture itself.
The map Input size, set in my tutorial, is 100 for X, Y, Z for tiny waves. 50 for X, Y, Z for small waves. Whereas yours are set as 50 for tiny waves and 25 for small waves. I know it seems odd but lower numbers in these scale areas increase the size rather than reduce them.
So how to overcome these problems?
Rather than ask you to recreate the mesh, at the correct size, we can use the trick I outline in the tutorial for mapping the textures to an Empty, but scaling then so that they approximate the same as correct ORCO mapping.
So do this. With the ocean mesh selected go to the materials button (F5) and select the Map input tab.
Select the tiny waves texture in the texture tab.
Change the mapping to Object & Empty.
change the sizeX, Y, Z to 10.00
Select the small waves texture and change its mapping to Object & Empty.
Alter its sizeX, Y, Z to 5.
Re-render and you will see the waves.
Can I make another suggestion? Add a hemi light as explained in the tutorial. This will add a needed overall illumination and take away that plastic look.
Anyway I hope you are able to make those changes. Now I must get back to finishing the final part 4 of the tutorial.
Cog
Yep, that fixed it, alright! I had no clue that my mesh was so much bigger than yours! Oh, and the hemi light did help with the plastic look.
Thanks Cog! You are AWESOME! Keep on blending!
btw, I can’t wait for part 4!!
Thank’s Pseudo-G,
You don’t have to wait any longer. The fourth and final part of My New Ocean Techniques in Blender tutorial is now published.
You can find the link to it via my website www.cogfilms.com
Now a short break as I prepare for my entry to the CGTALK FX:Wars Oceans challenge. Wish me luck.
Cog
Good luck Cog! And big thanks for another excellent tut 
Great tut. You go into detail most others don’t. It’s appreciated.
Break a leg!
Goddammit, break both your legs.
And while you’re at it, twist your left arm a bit.
You know that’s a joke right? :]
P
I’m not sure because my legs are wrapped around my left elbow at the moment.
Cog
Hey cog could you post the .blend of the finished model?
Yep. But it will have to wait till tomorrow. It’s on my machine at the office.
Cog
Yep. But it will have to wait till tomorrow. It’s on my machine at the office.
Cog[/quote] Awesome.
I have gone through the tutorial following each step closely and I am not getting the right results.
Everytime I get to creating crests and when I render it white-washes the image. I tried moving lamps,etc.
Also, after I created the displacement texture (the third time I went through the tutorial) some of the subsurfaces(?) were jagged and not like the others.
Anyhow…Any ideas as to what I might be doing wrong or suggestions would be kindly appretiated.
Thanks
Hi sukotash,
Select your close sea object, press TAB for mesh edit, and (F9) and select Set Smooth.
Cog
I tried making my own technique…it looked much better in the Blender render(say that five times fast!) here it is. I am still a beginner at oceans, I think it is good for a starter…
Hi all,
For those wanting instant results in ocean rendering, shame on you, here is the completed blend file for my New Ocean techniques in Blender tutorial. Please note that you will have to setup the sky tube with the free cloud image available from the last part 4 of the tutorial. So you will have to do some work. %|
PLEASE ALSO NOTE:
I have added a small paragraph to page 8 of part 1 explaining about making the mesh smooth. I had assumed that people attempting my tutorial would know that fundimental skill.
Anyway enjoy.
Cog
Absolutely great tutorial!
It was very easy to follow, and I liked the style in which it was written.
Some minor mistakes I found:
Page 8: you’re stating the mesh is 64 x 64 vertices, but it is 65 x 65 vertices.
Page 11: the image here (and the blend-files you so kindly provide) aren’t following the technique you explain at page 10. You only scaled the outer rim of vertices and didn’t extrude the edges (as you said on page 10 and the image on that page shows). The main way you can see this is that the mesh on page 11 contains triangular shaped faces at the inner rim corners. Doesn’t really make a difference, but I thought I’d mention it.
Page 12: the link to new-ocean-2.blend actually points to new-ocean-1.blend
Page 22: You’re saying to RIGHT-CLICK to make the texture single user, but shouldn’t this be LEFT-CLICK?
Page 24: “Copy the crest1 texture to the next texture slot down, 4” This should be 5, not 4.
Page 30: “With the plane mesh still selected” At this point in the tutorial not the plane is selected, but the empty (OK, this is really nitpicking)
These are all really small things though.
I’d like to sincerely thank you for the great tutorial and I wish you lots of success with the CGtalk FX war (which is incidentally one of the few sections at CGtalk I actually visit).
Thanks for your help Cog and a great Ocean scene!
I was wondering on your final why is it that when I try to change the camera angles and lens size that the plane also changes? Are they locked together? how do I change this. I was just experimenting and came across this.
Thanks for your time!
Hi suckotash,
Yes they are parented as desicribed in the last page of the tutorial. That parenting will allow the camera to pan or move. However, because of the way parenting works you can’t raise and lower the camera without the 2 ocean planes moving in their Z axis as well.
I have done some experimenting with IPO Drivers that allow rotation and X, Y movement but lock the Z axis. However, I thought I had introduced enough in my packed tutorial. Maybe that’s another Quick tutorial to do.
Cog.
Hi Crouch,
Many thanks for your detailed look at my tutorial. I am working through them and will make changes. By the way I intend to add a Change Log, which will list any modifications and page numbers so that it will be possible for anyone just to print those pages that have alterations on.
The Page 12 reference to the new-ocean-2.blend is pointing at the wrong file. So her is the correct one for anyone who wants it.
Cog